Methuselah Troop Transport (Ray Shields activated)

The Methusula Troop Transport was designed as a high armor / high speed front line transport to bring troops into high risk areas. Unconventional for its time it used super-hardened steel armor plating, which was prone to rusting due the moisture collected at high altitude when entering a planets atmosphere. The ship could deploy 250 troops from each "wing" and an additional 75 from an over-sized vehicle bay in the rear for a total transport capacity of 575 troops or 143,750lbs. The Methusula was fitted with its own internal hyper drive and is capable, thanks to its large engine to hull ratio, of over 15Gs of acceleration.

The ship is fitted with powerful ray shields that render it effectively immune to ground fire and even some larger ship weapons, however when the shields are active it cannot deploy troops and is limited to .6Gs of acceleration. As such they are only activated on approach to high risk areas.